It might be one of the most historically significant sandwich shops in the nation. When a patron orders
a ham and cheese on rye at “William the III” at the
Washington Navy Yard, that person is standing in a
19th-century structure that still contains the winch
for the first marine railway in the western hemisphere.

Though the U.S. Navy traces its birth to a procurement authorization from the Continental Congress
dated Oct. 13, 1775, the creation of the Navy Department
came 23 years later thanks to legislation passed by the
new federal Congress. Appointed as the first Secretary
of the Navy, Georgetown merchant Benjamin Stoddert
directed the growth of the new organization. Whereas
the first six frigates were built in nonfederal yards, to
save taxpayer dollars Stoddert envisioned future construction at U.S. Navy-owned facilities.

With a 12-acre site on the Eastern Branch of the
Potomac River — today known as the Anacostia —
approved for use by the Navy by President John Adams
in 1798, Congress subsequently passed legislation
to build two dry docks and a ship at the Southeast
Washington location.

These dry docks would never be built. Instead,
President Thomas Jefferson envisioned an 800-foot-
long, 175-foot-wide dry dock that could, through
a series of locks, raise the entire frigate fleet out of
water for long-term preservation in times of nonconfrontation.

The dry-docking facility, designed by Benjamin H.
Latrobe, would not receive funding from Congress.
During the first decade of the 19th century, a wharf
would be constructed to allow for the maintenance and
overhaul of naval vessels.

To keep operating costs down, by late 1804 the
frigates Constitution, United States, President, Congress,
Constellation and New York had been taken out of
service and placed “in ordinary” at the yard. Jefferson
instead invested in building a fleet of gunboats, with
the prototype built on the banks of the Eastern Branch.

With the United States declaring war on Great
Britain in 1812, work proceeded at the Navy Yard
on the frigate Columbia and the sloop of war Argus.
Construction was well along when the ships’ builders
had to burn them to prevent capture by the British
in August 1814. With much of the rest of the yard
burned, the Navy started to rebuild.

In addition to rebuilding the incinerated stores and
machine shops, the Navy built facilities to manufacture
the Navy’s anchors, chains and ballast blocks. Ship construction resumed, and in 1819, the Washington Navy
Yard launched a 74-gun ship of the line Columbus.

However, the Navy still had no dry docks in its industrial infrastructure. Instead, it borrowed an innovation
that had been introduced in Scotland a year before
Columbus was launched. Unable to afford the construction of a dry dock for his shipbuilding facility in Leith,
Scottish shipwright Thomas Morton would haul up
vessels on greased inclines to conduct hull repairs and
cleanings — a very unsafe and time-consuming process.

So in 1818, he introduced a device called the “
patent slip,” which consisted of a wheeled cradle that
would be lowered down rails that were placed on a
slight incline into a waterway. The vessel slated for
work would be placed on the cradle and pulled up the
incline, leaving the vessel high and dry.

The concept, which became better known as a
marine railway, was quickly copied by other shipyards in
Scotland, England, Ireland and Russia. In Washington,
Commodore John Rodgers demonstrated the concept in
1822 to President James Monroe, members of Congress,
foreign dignitaries and the public when 140 yard workers hauled the newly constructed frigate Potomac out of
the water on a wooden-planked incline.

Impressed, Congress provided funding for the more
permanent structure that remains intact today. In addition to the incline, the authorization enabled the Navy
to pay for a large shed enclosure over the incline so
that repair work would not be hindered by inclement
weather. The shed would last into the 20th century.

By that time, the Navy Yard had focused its mission
away from shipbuilding and ship repair to the production of armaments. Still, the incline remained in use
through World War II to repair small craft. Eventually
the Navy would construct a dry dock at Portsmouth,
Va., that would enter service in 1834. n